Breakneck by Dan Wang (2025)

I picked up Breakneck after reading a few excerpts online, drawn by Wang's reputation for cross-cultural analysis. The book delivers on that promise.

Wang offers a deep, objective, and nuanced view of the United States and China. He explores their similarities and differences in sensibilities and cultures with clear insights. He unpacks the attitudes, values, and policies that shape each government's actions. He also explains why and how citizens in both nations behave as they do.

Wang brings his own minor biases to the table—value judgments and occasional gaps in empathy for alternative viewpoints on citizen motivations. These are small flaws in an otherwise sharp work. On the positive side, his analysis of causal links between values, cultures, and resulting policies stands out. He connects the dots with precision.

The core thesis—that an engineering mindset defines all Chinese leadership and drives their policies, while a lawyer mindset shapes all American leaders and their decisions—holds up well. It simplifies complex systems but supports the argument with strong evidence. Wang weaves in the enduring bureaucracies of both governments effectively, showing how they reinforce these mindsets over time.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in global politics or cultural comparisons. It clarifies much without oversimplifying; 5/5 stars.

Tools That Work to Stave Off Enshittificaton

Enshittification never slows down. Microsoft. Meta, Google, Amazon – the trillion-dollar giants – keep reinforcing the battlements of their evil walled-garden ecosystems. Interoperability is dying. Open standards are disappearing. Even editing a plain text file on a phone is now impossible. In 2019 Martin Kleppman, famous for Design of Data Intensive Applications,  wrote a white paper defining the concepts of "Local First Software" that is aligned to the privacy manifesto of Max Schrems and that portended Corey's book about how terrible the tech industry is becoming.

In the first half of 2025, U.S. GDP crawled at 0.1 % per year, if we ignore the AI hype bubble. Yet Microsoft found the energy to shove Copilot into every menu, activate Recall to screenshot and watch everything you do, and push Edge into every corner of Windows. The privacy invasion is deeper and more aggressive than anything Meta or Google have tried lately. My blood pressure rises and my life expectancy declines every time I open the Start menu.

Sooner or later I will flatten every Windows machine in the house and install Linux. Microsoft completely bricked a few devices with updates so they are now running Linux. Our 2011 “Kitchen” laptop still limps along on Windows 11 Server – the only edition Microsoft still allows on old hardware.

Until the final upgrade, three simple, well-maintained tools keep the worst of the poop away. They install in minutes and need almost no attention afterward.

• RemoveWindowsAI One click removes Copilot, Recall, and every built-in AI component. If I want AI, I open a browser tab. I do not want it welded into the operating system. Download → run as admin → reboot → silence. https://github.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI

• Sophia Script for Windows: One PowerShell command turns off telemetry, ads, forced OneDrive sync, sponsored apps, and hundreds of other unwanted connections! Every change is well-documented and reversible. https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows

• PowerToys (yes, from Microsoft itself): PowerToys Run (Alt+Space) – launch files and programs without Edge https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N0DX20HK701 
  

Five minutes of setup gives back hours of calm. Keep most of the Microsoft proctological surveillance and pain away (for a while).

Use them now, while they still work. Remember: Linux is waiting.

Will we finally deploy the O'Neil mass driver?

In 1937, Edwin Northrup wrote about an "electric gun" in his (terrible) novel "Zero to Eighty." The book contained diagrams and the author actually built some prototypes at Princeton to prove out the idea, demonstrating it works well. Gerard O'Neill scaled up the concept and proposed a mass driver, aka "coil gun" in 1974.  That same year, O'Neill's "Colonization of Space" paper came out in Physics Today.  Reading that article changed my life. I joined the L5 Society (our song). It seems Jeff Bezos is also one of "Gerry's kids," embracing O'Neill's vision of human space colonization.

Among the key elements in O'Neill's vision is the use of mass drivers to move materials in space and also as a form of propulsion.  Land solar-powered mass drivers on a small asteroid, and use some of the mass of the asteroid itself as reaction mass to push the rock through space and park it in an orbit you want.  Robots assemble a large mass driver on the moon, then send the lunar regolith to a Lagrange point between the Earth and Moon, where solar smelters turn the ore into aluminum to build space colonies (and oxygen to breathe).  As O'Neill said in his lecture tour (that I attended), "The calculations [proving viability] are simple freshman physics."

If you are a "space nerd" like me, you should really read the book or watch the 2023 documentary "The High Frontier." I attended the MIT independent activities period (IAP) where they built a mass driver. I was a founding member of the L5 Society.

The military developed a rail gun for ships and the system is operational, but it will be phased out in favor of other systems that are superior for the military's purposes.

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A new Space company, "Moonshot Space" just came out of stealth and will develop a terrestrial mass driver to move fuel and cargo to low earth orbit. The payloads must be able to survive extremely high acceleration and the scale-up to send over 100 Kg per launch will be interesting to watch.

Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson (2025)

Despite moments of political bias and some selective use of data, Abundance excels at what few books attempt: explaining the mechanics of modern economic growth within the tangled realities of politics, culture, and urban life. Klein and Thompson trace how societies build—or fail to build—the physical foundations of prosperity: housing, infrastructure, and industrial capacity.

They move easily from global trends to city-level bottlenecks, showing how ideology, regulation, and social attitudes shape what gets built and what stalls. The book's strength lies in its synthesis: it connects political theory with hard economic outcomes, revealing how values and governance directly determine material progress.

Where Vaclav Smil dissects production from a paleontological view -- purely technical or ecological perspective, Abundance focuses on agency: on the people and policies that choose between creation and constraint. Even when chronicling policy fiascos like California's high-speed rail, the authors maintain a credible optimism rooted in civic will and practical reform.

Addressed primarily to liberal readers, their message is blunt: scarcity is a political choice, not an inevitability. Choosing abundance means reclaiming ambition and capacity for collective improvement.

Clear, timely, and uncommonly coherent, Abundance deserves attention well beyond its partisan audience. 5/5 stars.

Lions and Scavengers by Ben Shapiro (2025)

Ben Shapiro's book crafts an allegory contrasting Enlightenment-driven wealth creation with socialist power grabs aiming for equal outcomes through wealth redistribution. The ecological model—hunters versus scavengers—starts strong, illustrating humanist rationality against emotional collectivism. Yet, the analogy falters. Shapiro introduces "weavers" and forces mismatched behaviors into the framework, muddying the narrative. Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults tackles similar themes with sharper clarity, avoiding speculative motives and strained metaphors. Shapiro's evidence and judgments on justice and policy hold weight, but selective scripture quotes and ascribed dark intentions to political actors weaken his case. The book gestures at insight but collapses under its own contrivances. I do not recommend this book. 3/5 stars.

The sword of freedom by Yossi Cohen (2025)

This book is equal parts memoir, political manifesto, and strategic reflection. While the text is saturated with self-promotion and at times descends into outright boasting, Cohen nevertheless delivers an unusually candid account of the inner workings of a modern intelligence service and its entanglement with statecraft. His personal ambition—to position himself as a plausible future prime minister—is barely concealed, and readers seeking a detached or modest narrative will not find it here.

Despite the political grandstanding, the book offers genuine rewards. Cohen's biographical vignettes and his recounting of espionage operations are both entertaining and instructive. More importantly, his discussion of the mission of a national intelligence service, the role of the individual spy, and the necessity of engaging with one's adversaries on their own terms is striking. He shows rare empathy for the values and goals of opponents, and from this vantage point explains the effectiveness of disinformation, deception, "big lies," and ideological campaigns waged against the West.

Perhaps the book's greatest contribution lies in its critique of the West's chronic diplomatic failures. Cohen highlights the disjunction between Western nations' reliance on Enlightenment humanist assumptions and the fundamentally different axioms guiding most political powers in the world today. By revealing how this mismatch enables adversaries to manipulate and outmaneuver liberal democracies, he forces readers to rethink not only intelligence but the philosophical underpinnings of Western diplomacy.

Ambitious, self-serving, yet ultimately illuminating, The Sword of Freedom succeeds in balancing flawed authorial ego with valuable insight into intelligence, power, and the limits of Western ideals. 4/5 stars

Midnight in Moscow by John J Sullivan (2024)

The book offers a compelling and insightful recounting of the American ambassador's experiences in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the tense prelude and early stages of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. For me, it was an eye-opening narrative. I've always found it perplexing how international dynamics can unravel when leaders become so entrenched in their own perspectives that they lose sight of reality. This story highlights a recurring failure of imagination—an inability to grasp the clear, unvarnished actions and motives of their counterparts on the global stage. 4/5 Stars. 

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859)

This gripping, long-form essay is clear, approachable, and relevant in 2025.  The concepts are timeless and universal.  Our modern politics and rhetorical discussions now among the ruling class elites would benefit enormously from the civics concepts and reasoning in this essay.  In particular the balance between the "Tyranny of the Majority" and individual rights in a society are fantastic.  Highly recommended, 5/5 Stars.

If I betray these words by Wendy Dean and Simon Talbot (2023)

This book presents a fascinating and in-depth collection of vignettes that highlight the dedication and idealism of medical professionals. It vividly illustrates the struggles these devoted doctors face against the encroachment of private equity firms and other large corporate entities that destroy the integrity of patient care.

Through these narratives, we witness firsthand the detrimental impact of prioritizing shareholder value over patient well-being. The most valuable aspect of the book lies in the authors' insightful recommendations for how physicians can effectively navigate these challenging circumstances to ensure high-quality care for their patients.

Overall, this book is a thought-provoking examination of the intersection between medicine and corporate interests, offering both inspiration and practical guidance for healthcare professionals. 4/5 Stars.

At War With Ourselves by H. R. McMaster (2024)

Extremely well-written, well-organized, and well-edited account of a fantastically bright, competent, selfless person's attempt to navigate the "nest of vipers" in the senior leadership of the executive branch. I enjoyed this one and recommend it. 5/5 Stars.

Blood Money by Peter Schweizer (2024)

Some of the data and Chinese publications mentioned in this book were new to me, so I did learn a bit about  the diplomacy and politics of Sino-US relations.  However, the book spends most of the content speculating about motivations and building conspiracy theories around circumstantial evidence.  I do not recommend this one. 2/5 Stars.

Deception - The Great Covid Cover-Up by Rand Paul (2023)

The Wuhan Lab's "gain of function," including cover-ups, deception, and the people behind the odd lockdown policies are brightly illuminated in this interesting book.  The silly politics are distracting and boring, but the information about the corruption, censorship, and the conflicts of interest within government funding agencies and EcoHealth Alliance are very good.  4/5 Stars.

Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier (2020)

This book is much better than I expected. The author is a journalist who does a very good job of presenting the science through the words and interviews with the thought leading scientists themselves.  I did not appreciate or enjoy some of the social commentary and politics, but she does present highly relevant and astute observations. 5/5 Stars.

Lost in Trans Nation by Miriam Grossman (2023)

I recently watched this Free Press interview with Steven Pinker where professor Pinker chats with Michael Moynaham on "why smart people believe in stupid things" such as conspiracy theories.  Moynahan grilled Pinker on many current events that evidence backsliding of our western societies away from rationality and enlightenment thinking, including evidence-based science. In this bit of the interview, during their discussion of Jon Haidt's book Pinker acknowledges that the political, economic, and scientific communities are retreating from science.

"The routine pathologizing of ordinary human emotion where every setback is a trauma where every difference is a neuroatypical condition and which Haidt and Greg lukanov have identified as the three great law lies: 1) whatever doesn't kill you makes you weaker 2) always trust your emotions and 3) the world may be divided into good and evil. They argue these lies are the diametric opposite to what cognitive behavior therapy tries to accomplish. And we know this therapy is one of the most successful forms of therapy of all time And the set of three great untruths may have had as much of a role as the like button on Facebook. I would add another thing. I tend to think that the Doom Mongering of mainstream media, which is easier and easier as everyone is an on-the-spot reporter.

Among the anti-science phenomena where activist bullies have destroyed evidence-based studies, enlightenment ideals, rationality, and the progress we had made in mental health treatments is the "trans" movement.  This fantastic book by Miriam Grossman is well-researched, well-written, and valuable.  The references and depth of her explanations is fantastic.  I was crying through two of the chapters as the real traumas were described in excruciating detail. All parents should read this book. 5/5 Stars.  Highly recommended.